Halloween Let Downs

I knew I would go on Facebook today and be assaulted by pictures of girls in slutty costumes.  I know I said this before, but Halloween is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with our culture.  I am disgusted by all the pictures of young women wearing little else than their bras and underwear, posing in lewd positions with their flesh hanging all over the place and their boobs looking like they could pop like balloons.  Whose parents told them that whoring themselves like this is okay?  Where are these women's mothers?  More importantly, where are their fathers??

But I digress...I guess.

It really was amazing, though, how many people couldn't tell whether I was a man or a woman last night, simply because I wasn't bearing any cleavage.  I realized that if I had decided to dress in what is deemed as "gender appropriate" attire, I would have had to choose between Slutty Cop, Slutty Cat, or Pirate Hooker.  I did not see anything that deviated from these three categories.

The sluttiness was not the only thing that bothered me about last night.  In fact, it was the least of my problems.  I spent the majority of the night in queues for various clubs and cabs, freezing my ass off in my silver suit.  I never made it inside anywhere--there were just too many people, too many cover charges, too many stipulations.  Everyone was being rather ornery towards me, perhaps because they thought I was a man.  I always get really spontaneous on Halloween, so in the line for the QMU, I ran over to some people that were huddling to stay warm and asked a man dressed as a banana if I could join them.  They obliged, but shortly thereafter, a short blonde girl in the center asked, "And what the f*** are you supposed to be?"  I gave her a dumbfounded look through my helmet and said, "Uhhh...an astronaut?"  She smirked and said, "I thought they were supposed to be white."  I felt like I was in a 90's movie about popular girls.

Someone else on the street called me a condom, and when I tried to wave at a man wearing a space suit and eating fish and chips behind a glass window in a restaurant, all he did was look at my American flag printed across my left breast and shake his head.  It was as if that flag was all he saw.  I can't even parody American sentiment here without offending someone.  I just wanted to be proud of my country, not be a whore, and make friends last night.  Was that so bold a venture?

One slightly redeeming event happened when I was desperately trying to hail a cab in my spacesuit (it works a lot better when I'm wearing a tank top).  An older man came out of a restaurant and asked me if I was American.  I said yes, and when he asked me whom I was voting for and I told him Obama, he cupped my freezing fingers in his warm hands and said, "Bless you."  He then insisted upon bringing me into the restaurant to meet his friends, who were all pleased to hear of my political persuasion.  They were all just so friendly and wonderful.  We talked for a minute about US politics and before I left, I thanked them for their kindness and told the man who brought me inside that he had warm hands.  He kissed me on the cheek.

Again, I was confronted with the extremism of Glasgow.  People are either super friendly and welcoming, or cold-hearted and nasty, pushing past you in the line for a taxi or calling you a condom.  I am so sick of the inconsistency--it's disorienting.

Came home last night upset, but not emotional, that my refreshing new perspective on living in Scotland changed so swiftly in one evening.  Got a haircut with Sarah this morning and felt a little worse, only because hair dressers have a tendency to tell you how dry and awful your hair looks so they can squeeze more money out of you for treatments and whatnot.  I just didn't need another man either obviously or subliminally telling me I wasn't good enough or pretty enough.  Not today.

Hope your Halloween and its hangovers, physical or otherwise, were not as unpleasant as mine.